Supply Chain Engineering

Supply Chain Engineering considers how modern production and operations management techniques can respond to the pressures of the competitive global marketplace. It presents a comprehensive analysis of concepts and models related to outsourcing, dynamic pricing, inventory management, RFID, and flexible and re-configurable manufacturing systems, as well as real-time assignment and scheduling processes. A significant part is also devoted to lean manufacturing, line balancing, facility layout and warehousing techniques. Explanations are based on examples and detailed algorithms while discarding complex and unnecessary theoretical minutiae. All examples have been carefully selected from an industrial application angle. This book is written for students and professors in industrial and systems engineering, management science, operations management and business. It is also an informative reference for managers looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their production systems.

• Facility Design
• Operations Management
• Optimization
• Production Systems
• Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)
• Scheduling
• Supply Chain
• Supply Chains
• Engineering Economics

"In particular, the new book by Dolgui and Proth is a welcome addition to the knowledge needed for the design of effective, productive supply chains, with an emphasis on useful methods and solution techniques. Indeed, the choice of topics covered by this book is a careful balance between the engineering solution of problems concerning the entire supply chain, such as pricing, outsourcing, and inventory management throughout the supply chain, and of problems concerning the components of the chain, such as manufacturing/service layout, flow line balancing, and warehouse management.  Both perspectives are essential  for success, since “a chain is as strong as its weakest link,” while at the same time “a chain must perform better than the sum of its individual elements.

When I read and evaluated this book as a candidate for our students in the course Design and Control of Production and Manufacturing Systems this year, for both graduate and advanced undergraduate students, I needed to answer this question: What is the strongest attribute of this new book? Throughout the pages I found the answer (and ended up recommending it): These authors, both experts in the theory of supply chain engineering and innovators of algorithms and methods themselves, have been able to contain their deep knowledge of complex theory by understanding what industry truly needs, and have indeed presented it at the right level. There are still plenty of advanced and rigorous algorithms and techniques besides the concise summaries of advanced material and simpler solution approaches; hence, the more mathematical and the less analytical students, researchers, engineering practitioners and designers, managers and consultants will find relevant and necessary knowledge for success with their supply chains."

Prof. Shimon Y. Nof, Production Planning & Control: The Management of Operations, Francis & Taylor, 04 Jan 2012

“This book contributes to lessen the gap between academic methods and business activities by providing simple and systematic methods for a series of supply chain problems faced by real world decision makers and managers. The book accomplishes a triple objective for the reader: to provide the basic concepts and representation models for identified problems, to provide an actual view of businesses and to provide practical strategies to include market, competition and external context issues in management decisions.”

 “The book will be certainly useful both for managers and the academic community, since students can use it for understanding how theory and conceptual solutions are applied in real life, and for practitioners who will find in this book a practical guide for application of modern methods to real-life problems.”

Prof. Susana Relvas, European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 211, 2011, pp. 216–217

“The book chapters address, in parallel presentations, various aspects of supply chain engineering and management. In each chapter, the terminology is explained first, then the well established results reported in the literature are reviewed to “set the stage” for presentation of new results. In most cases the presentation of methods and technologies is illustrated with real-life examples.”

“The book, which is written by the right authors, came at the right time to help the managers and other knowledge workers of the industrial organisations to become familiar with useful, usable and utilized methodologies and technologies which can contribute to improving the performance of the enterprise. At the same time, the work can be viewed as pointer to a very promising research direction for the academia people and researchers from system and industrial engineering. Consultants and software companies may get new inspiring ideas from this book.”

Acad. Florin Gheorghe Filip, Studies in Informatics and Control, vol. 20, n° 3, 2011

• Centre for Industrial Engineering and Computer Science, Ecole des Mines de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne CX 02, France

  Alexandre Dolgui

• Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, Université de Metz, Metz CX 1, France

  Jean-Marie Proth

Alexandre Dolgui is Director of the Centre for Industrial Engineering and Computer Science at the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne (France). His principal research focuses on manufacturing line design, production planning and supply chain optimization. At present, he has published 5 books, about 130 papers in refereed journals and 25 book chapters.

Professor Dolgui is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Production Research, an Area Editor of Computers and Industrial Engineering, and Associate Editor of the Omega and the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He is also an editorial board member of several journals, including the International Journal of Production Economics, the International Journal of Systems Sciences (past Associate Editor) and the International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management.  He was guest editor of special issues of Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Mathematical Modeling and Algorithms, European Journal of Operational Research and Annual Reviews in Control. He has been Scientific Chair of several major international symposiums and conferences. Prof. Dolgui has been the supervisor of 18 PhD theses in France.

He is a member of various international advisory councils, such as the Board of the International Foundation for Production Research; Founding member of the European Virtual Institute on Innovation in Industrial Supply Chains and Logistic Networks and chairman of IFAC Technical Committee on Manufacturing Modelling for Management and Control.

Prof. Jean-Marie Proth is currently Consultant, Researcher and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He has been Research Director at INRIA (National Institute for Computer Science and Automation), leader of the SAGEP (Simulation, Analysis and Management of Production Systems) team and the Lorraine research centre of INRIA, Associate Member in the Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, University Professor in France, as well as at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (Brussels). He has carried on close collaboration with several US universities. His main research focuses on operations research techniques, Petri nets and data analysis for production management, especially facility layout, scheduling and supply chains.

Prof. Proth has authored or coauthored 15 books (text books and monographs) and more than 150 papers in major peer-reviewed international journals. He is the author or coauthor of about 300 papers for international conferences and 7 book chapters, the editor of 8 proceedings of international conferences, 55 times an invited speaker or invited professor throughout the world.

J.-M. Proth was the supervisor of 28 PhD theses in France and the USA. He was also a coeditor of the journal Applied Stochastic Models and Data Analysis. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (1995–1998). He was guest editor of Engineering Costs and Production Economics and several other refereed international journals. He has been the Chairman of the Program Committee of various international conferences, an officer of several professional societies, for example: International Society for Productivity Enhancement, Vice-President of Flexible Automation, 1992–1995.

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